The Opelousas courier., 1887-04-23
INDIAN WHEAT,
IT'S COST TO RAISE AND TRANS.
Port TO MARKET.
Primitive Methods of Planting and
Harvesting in the Punjab-
How Crops Are Moved
to the Seaboard.

most fertile and pepulous countries on the
lace OF the globe, being for thousands of
miles as level as any part of San Joaquin
Valley, having large cities like our own,
and interspersed through its area at dis
tances of fifty or eighty miles apart, while
its rural population is clustered in com
pact villages which stud the intervening
country at a general distance of from two
to four miles from each other. There are
no isolated farms nor farmhouses as with
us, neither stone wall nor fence to OBJ
struct the view or impede the horseman,
from Calcutta to PeshaWur or from Luck
now to Madras, except the railway cattle
fences. Still each village has its boun-
diaries, which are marked by four or more
masonry bench marks, solidly embedded
In the ground at the angles and rising
some four feet above it.
In each village there are a few Zumeen-
dars, or landholders-not landowners
who either cultivate the land on their
w account or on shares, and are re-
sponslble to the government for all reve-
hue taxes and the general peace and good
order of their village. It will be well
to remark, also, that along the ~seacoast
and for a few hundred miles inland there
Is little or no wheat grown, the soil, eli
mate and other circumstances being I'M
favorable; S it is principally from the
interior provinces that wheat is exported.
INDIA IS tertlle-so much SO that all
over the country there are two, and fire.
quentiy three, crops year produced on
! the same land. During the sbursat,'' or
rainy season, which occurs in June and
lasts to and through September, there are
grown rice, Indian corn, a and other
pulses, after harvesting which.fhe land is
again prepared for the irrigated crop,
consisting, In the upper country especially,
OF wheat, cotton, sugar cane, peas, etc.
for which in Lower Bengal is substituted
the poppyhead Opium, indigo and the
like.
First to be considered is the planting.
For this we viii allow as follows:
Per acre.
Seed wheat, say 1 rupee or 1G an
mas, equals 4S cents
Flowing, sowing and narrowing
) yokes of oxensat 5 annas, Is an
Has, equaiS ID cents
coolies at annes, 3 annaa, equals "a cent.
Hoing into beds
eoollesa a. arlnas, 4 annas, equals Ii cent:
Total cost per acre.........S 90
It may not be amiss TO explain that the
seed is sown broadcast, the ground
ploughed with a wooden pillow or crooked
piece of acacia trunk, and is narrowed a,
often by a thornbush as By anything else,
drawn by a pair of not ovef-fed bullocks
and guided by an almost naked coolie,
who follows behind, detiantly crushing
the knobs with his bare feet, while hi
clean-shaven Uranium, turbanless, is proof
against the scorching rays of an Indiar
sun.
For the purpose of irrigation, the lane
is subdivided into patches of about forty
bhigahs or twenty-five acres, in thu
midst of which stands a well ten O
twelve feet in diameter, the water being
from forty to sixty feet below the surface
Around this favored spot are reared a few
huge banyans and other useful trees t.
shelter the workmen from the heat of The
sun. for this spot is their barnyard ane
laboratory, where pumping, thashing an6
all kinds of farm jobs are done. TIL
water is raised by a pair of bu1lock
hitched to a beam working a horizontal
wheel OF about ten feet in diameter, Will
wooden cogs on its upper outer edge
which are geared into similar cogs 0
pegs Oh a vertical wheel on the cute
edge. On this vertical wheel swinging
loosely from the top and leading down II
a few feet under the water-the whee
being directly over the WELLS an end
less rope, or rather a rope ladder witt
wooden rounds about fifteen inches apart
Each round or rung carries an earthen
ware vessel holding about half a gallon
of water, which it tits over into a trough
on top as each vessel is in turn raised t.
the surface by the rotation of the wheel
This, the Persian wheel, as it is called
Is the general aadithe only mede of irri
cation thraughput the country, esesT
b. ea1aackS-s~rrasses1 ny Sib honorable
East India Company, who conquered an,
held India previous to 1859.
From all | could learn, the Zumeendar
in the Punjab pay about one dollar pc
acre for the use of water from the Gov
eminent canals-they having to contrac
their own sub bitches from the distribu
ting canals.
To irrigate, then, twenty-five acres b
the Persian wheel system, three yekes o
oxen and three coolies are employed with
out intermission forfour months, day an
night.
3 yokes of oxen, working 5 hours
each, at 5 annas, Is aIlnas, equals 45 cent
} coolies at 2 annals each, 5 annas,
equals g scent
Total % cent
There is 63 cents per day for 100 day
$50 so for twenty-five acres and diyid
ing this sum by twenty-five we get SD 0
per acre.
Now, we come to harvesting. A
hands, both male and female, of age
I from nine to ninety, turn out to harvest
and are to be seen with their curved real
ing hooks of a very primitive style, hal
squatting on their hunkers, in long line
curling away at an apparently intermins
s BILE stretch of wheatfeld, and frequent
the quantity cut during the day is carte
, to the well or farm-yard the next. AIS
, by an old Sikh laW-not an English on
! each hired coolie Is entitled to all /
can pack on his back of wheat sheaves /
his portion Of a share in the spoil-n
matter who owns the crop, and avail
himself of the privilege at the end /
each days work. The Winnowing is dor
in the open air by d sieve in the old styI
30 We "a get the approximate cost p,
acre, as follows:
D hired coolies viii cut i acre at 2
{ arnas a day, 4 annas, equals. II cen
Carting to well, 3 annas, equals. o cen
Thrashsa1r 10 ilincksfraadIn nI1f